Only three teams changed order on MoSSBODS this week, and only two on MoSHBODS this week, and all of them from the bottom third. The only team moving by more than a single spot was Gold Coast, who fell two spots to 15th on MoSSBODS.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9978, and the Rating gap between 1st and 8th stands at 7.8 Scoring Shots on MoSSBODS and 28.1 Points on MoSHBODS. Only six teams are rated as above average on MoSSBODS, and only seven on MoSHBODS.

On the Component Ratings, on Offence MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now have Top 3s of Dogs, Lions, and Cats, while on Defence their shared Top 3s are still Dees, Dogs, and Cats.

On MoSSBODS, 5 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (no change), 7 are rated negatively on both (no change), 2 are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 4 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (no change). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.690, which is down a fraction on last week’s number.

In the animation below, we can see the path that each team has taken to arrive at its current Rating.

And, in the chart below, we can see how the current crop of teams compares with the Premiers and Runners Up across V/AFL history at the same point in their respective home-and-away seasons.

We see that, on that comparison, the Western Bulldogs come out quite well, with a Combined Rating at about the 90th percentile of all previous Grand Finalists.

And, finally, as always, to MARS, which re-ranked only four teams this week, swapping Port Adelaide and Melbourne, and Fremantle and Carlton.

No teams moved by more than a single spot.

(Note that there have been some small adjustments to MARS Ratings this week as I realised I had inadvertently recorded the Sydney v St Kilda game in the MARS input data as a 92-83 win for the Saints)

MARS now has only seven teams rated as better-than-average, and has only five more Rated 990 or above.

The Rating gap between first and last stands at almost 68 Rating Points and that between 1st and 8th at almost 30 Rating Points. 1st and 6th, however, are separated by only 12 Rating Points, and 8th and 14th by under 12 Rating Points.

The biggest gaps in the Ratings are between 7th and 8th (13 Rating Points), and between 17th and 18th (17.2 Rating Points)

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find the highest differences for Collingwood, and Carlton where Rating System rankings are relatively higher than Ladder position, and for Sydney, West Coast, and Adelaide, where Rating System rankings are relatively lower than Ladder position.

MARS continues to provide the most outlying rankings of the three Systems, it having the outright most-extreme ranking for all but five of the teams.

By comparison, MoSSBODS has the outright most-extreme ranking for only one team, and MoSHBODS has it for just one as well.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS agree about the ranking of 16 teams (swapping Fremantle and Collingwood only), MoSSBODS and MARS about the ranking of five teams, and MoSHBODS and MARS about the ranking of the same five teams.

Lastly, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Carlton, Sydney, and West Coast have the widest range of rankings (five spots), while 11 teams have rankings that differ by no more than two spots, including Adelaide, Hawthorn, Gold Coast, North Melbourne, and St Kilda, for which all three Systems have the same ranking.